Now in many ways, I have certain things that I hate writing, fight scenes being one of them. When it comes to sword fights, I usually know the beginning, the end, and somehow fill in the middle part of it. Perhaps it would be better if I could act it out, but let's face it, I don't know how to sword fight in real life, but I do have references via TV and the movies. But it simply comes down to that when I write a sword fight, I have to choreograph it in my head, actually 3 fucking D visualization. I typically start out with a fight being about oh maybe 500 to 1000 words, then over about 10 edits(Yeah I work on them that much), I end up with close to 3000 to 4000 words, with many actions. The next problem is trying to not repeat any of that.
Naval battles are another. Outside of air force pilots, there are few humans on this planet that have ever had to fight in 3D to the extent that a space battle happens. There are many things to take into account, and that scene from Wrath of Khan where they comment that Khan has only ever fought in 2D, and as such, Kirk orders the Enterprise down 10 000 kilometers. And Khan falls for it. And that therein is the issue sometimes with doing naval battles: you have ships moving towards each other and they can move up and down, and whatever technology you have for locking weapons on target, has to compensate for all this shit. But it is important, and much like fight scenes, I take quite some time to go from draft to final version of the battles. Hell, I have two battle sequences in mind that I literally stretched over at least 5 scenes and sometimes minimum 5 points of view. This is why I don't like doing them, but in doing them, I get the final details in pretty good.
Now that I am publishing stuff, it is, for the most part, set in stone. I hate that because up until now, if I had a new idea, I could just go back and change it. Can't anymore. Ahhh such is life.
Characters can also be quite challenging, trying to instill unique personalities on so many of them; sometimes I kill them off just to keep it simple. And if I spend a lot on a character versus lesser time for some of these, and then kill them off, it is the name of the game for me. No one is sacred.
Overall at the end of the day I enjoy writing, and there will always be something I hate to tackle, and I know I am not in a unique position on that, but as I learned from going from undergrad to the other side and being a teaching assistant, you see things differently and get a better understanding of what the hell is going on. Maybe you the reader will too, reading stuff about how I write.
Of course now there is also the editing that goes on after a piece is written, I mean who doesn't bitch about editing (if you do find someone, please send them in my direction). It doesn't matter how many cute programs you use to edit, how many times you end up going through it on your own, you are going to miss stuff. The author, except in very rare cases, cannot at all, catch all there is to catch, and hence why we rely on editors. I tried and failed to a pretty damned good degree on some pieces. Oh how it would be nice to just be able to write it out and that's it. For Triumvirate, Book 2, I am on at least the 10th full edit, and one more by me to go before it even hits the editor.
At the end of the day, despite all the bitching, writing is a good release for me, I just wish all parts were equally fun (this written by the guy who has only been editing for the past 4 weeks at this point!!).
Now for the next entry, it will either be a deeper look at Desperation or perhaps a sneak peak at Trimvirate!!
Ahhh man he's on the fucking soap box again!!
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